Adaptation
by lewilder
Summary: Snapshots of Zuko and Katara's life in the early postwar period. Prompted drabble collection for Zutara Week 2014.
1. Melancholy

**Disclaimer: It's all Bryke's, except what's not.**

**A/N: Drabbles are not in chronological order.**

**I wrote most of these without internet access and couldn't remember what two of the prompts were, so, after the fact, I've decided to call this "week" complete at five completed prompts.**

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_melancholy (n) - a feeling of pensive sadness_

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Some wounds run deeper than skin and bone.

Katara remembers Gran-Gran telling her this, years ago, when her newly-widowed father would go for long walks alone on the ice, even though children as young as Katara knew it wasn't a safe thing to do. When the men came back from war with smiles that didn't reach their eyes, and hugged their wives and children with a fierce sense of protection running through their scarred bodies, as though each family unit was a fragile thing, poised to break.

And they could break. Katara had seen that, too.

Sometimes she thinks she and Zuko have that going for them—they were both already broken when they entered this marriage, and there can be nothing left to give, no kind of hurt they haven't already endured.

They're already broken, so now they can heal.

It is a slow process, and the war taught Katara that, too—that no matter how skilled her healing becomes, physical wounds are only part of the battle.

She could give Zuko sleeping potions or herbs when he wakes up, shaking and haunted, from nightmares of his past. But when she tries, he argues with her, his face pale and his eyes wide like a skittish ostrich-horse colt.

He has been trained, like most men, to think that accepting _help_ means showing weakness, and he refuses to take medicine like a sick child being nursed back to health.

(They don't know what health is, anymore, aside from healing-scroll definitions of a sound body.)

Katara has given up on the potions, but she has learned that there are other ways she can comfort her husband. He will usually consent to being coaxed back into bed when he's left it, to her wrapping her arms around him and running tender fingers through his hair—it grows longer by the month, in the style of old lords, but he won't grow a beard for fear of looking like his father (and nothing she can say will convince him otherwise)—until he sleeps.

She stays awake, those nights, and holds both of their hurts in her heart.

And when the rains come, when there is so much water drenching the Fire Nation that it coats as thick as new-fallen snow, except that it is temporary, and not nearly cold enough—those are the times when Katara feels her own brokenness the most. She is not at home here and never will be, just like the monsoons. She is begrudgingly accepted, but whispered about behind her back, and she will never be loved by the people she helps her husband rule.

She stands outside in her element, soaking in the pouring rain, and refuses all of Zuko's offers of cover while she's outside or blankets to wrap up in when she returns inside.

Eventually, Zuko learns to stop offering.

He comes to stand beside her in the rain at times, tentative and hesitant because he can be strong for his country as it heals, strong for his broken sister who tried to kill him, but he doesn't think he can be strong for _her_, his wife.

He says she's always been the strong one, but she disagrees.

She wouldn't have married him if she didn't think they could help each other, and his presence at her side, even when the lightning flashes in the distance, means more than he knows, although she tries to tell him, to convince him, in her own way.

And so _she_ lets _him_ take her hand and lead her to cool, quiet gardens when the rains are gone and the dry heat of winter, the endless sameness of days and nights that never vary in their length, take their turn to make her mourn the home she left behind.

(She gave it up for him, and she wouldn't trade his love for all the bitter, icy freshness of her home and tribe, but she welcomes the fact that he doesn't judge her sadness, all the same.)

Some wounds run deeper than skin and bone, some hurts are too ancient for one young lord and lady to mend, and some days, all they can do is cling to their own fragile promises.

Most days, that is enough.


	2. Jubilant

_jubilant (adj) - feeling or expressing great happiness and triumph_

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The smell of incense reeks thick in the air and flames waver all around, filling the nighttime streets with unnatural light.

Festival week is full of long days and longer nights as the Fire Nation celebrates its past and looks forward to its future.

In the capital, the Fire Lord and his wife walk among the people who hold colored lanterns and clear a path once they recognize the couple. With Zuko's scar that Katara won't let him hide with a hood and her insistence that they wear their finest Fire Nation robes, they're hard to miss. _This is a time to celebrate your people_, she says, and her magnanimity astounds him. _Wear your hairpiece and topknot and be proud_.

What he has to take pride in, she specified weeks ago in a carefully crafted missive bearing his seal that was sent to all the regions and colonies detailing the aspects of Fire Nation history that will be celebrated this week: their firebending skills, their inventions, their honor and culture.

This is _not_ a week to remember the war, but rather to remember what is left _besides _the war and its remnants that seem to lurk around every corner.

(Katara is wearing only red and gold this week, and in exchange has made Zuko promise to spend several winter solstice festivals with her at the South Pole, and to travel there to dedicate their future children to Tui and La as well as to Agni. He promises, because it would take more than a few trips to her homeland to make up for what she does here in his country, what she does for _him_ by choosing to walk beside him in life.)

The guards are out with them tonight, but have made themselves inconspicuous as they walk the crowded streets. There haven't been any assassination attempts made in the past few months.

For small, sharp instants, Zuko remembers hints of times when he was happy—when he was young, before he knew about the war, when his family was whole, all wrapped up in the smells of incense and fire flakes and roasted meat.

But then Katara reaches out and wraps her hand around his, and the soft touch of her fingers on this hot night makes him remember that he is happy _now_, too, although in a different way.

Now, his happiness is birthed in sorrow and fought for every day.

Katara smiles at him around the mouthful of fire flakes she's just eaten (and it had taken him what seemed like _months _of betting on their sparring matches—if she loses, she has to try fire flakes again—to get her to acquire any sort of taste for them), then blinks back tears as the spice sears into her tongue.

Zuko reminds himself not to feed her the spicier versions of fire flakes ever again and hides his laughter as best he can, but she still scowls at him as he leads her to a tea stand—included in the festival at Iroh's insistence, because "the fine brewing of tea is also a part of Fire Nation history"—and buys her a drink.

She sips the tea primly, her stiff manner a contrast to the fact that she's just bent tea at his cheek in what would be the beginning of a childish bending battle if they were alone and not in public with a new-forged reputation to uphold.

Still, the smile she gives him when he pulls a packet of dried seaweed, imported from the South Pole, out of his pocket and hands it to her, makes him forget for a moment about teabending and assassins and rewriting skewed history.

For an instant, he is not the Fire Lord with his Lady on a mission to rebuild the world.

He is just Zuko, with Katara.

So he stops to kiss her amidst the incense and the lanterns, and then she laughs and takes her snack in one hand and his hand in the other before she leads him further into the crowd.


	3. Motorcycle

**A/N: I took many liberties with this prompt + interpreted it as 'a potentially dangerous + fun thing to ride', which turned into dragons. And then I took many liberties with canonical dragons.**

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_motorcycle (n) - a two-wheeled vehicle that is powered by a motor and has no pedals_

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The message comes from Iroh on a clear autumn afternoon—Fire Lord Zuko's presence is required in the Sun Temple as soon as he can set his affairs in order.

Zuko reads and re-reads the letter until he feels a headache start to build behind his eyes, but he can't find any hidden message, any clue as to why he has been called to visit the civilization he hasn't heard from since he was sixteen.

Katara looks up from her habitual spot where she lounges in one of the meeting chairs of his office—when she's not peering over his shoulder, reading his papers and offering suggestions on policy—and says that perhaps they finally decided he should offer reparations for the damage he and Aang did when they visited years ago. Zuko hadn't offered reparations to the minor tribes like the Sun Warriors or the swampbenders or the sandbenders, after all.

Zuko frowns and she smiles her most practiced, innocent smile at him.

(Sokka's recent visit has done little for Zuko's wife's sense of humor.)

When Zuko arrives with as little fuss as possible, he finds the Temple in the midst of an uproar of celebration: the dragon egg that the tribe has guarded so carefully for years, that was hidden away since Roku and Sozin's time—the one that Zuko so thoughtlessly swiped from its resting place in the sanctuary—has hatched.

Dragons are loyal creatures, Zuko discovers, and because he unwittingly triggered this one's birth, it has what he considers an overdeveloped attachment to him. (Later, Katara will bend water at him before laughing and kissing him and telling him, _Of course it likes you. You're a very likable person_. Zuko thinks the Fire Nation heat must have gone to her head, because he is many things—_awkward, overwhelmed, partially redeemed_—but _likable_ has never been one of them.)

When he returns to the capital, he works with Iroh and Katara to decide the best way to tell his people the news. Because the dragons have been rumored to be extinct for so long, because Iroh's already-damaged reputation is marginally at risk for his lie to save the dragons' lives, because it is still considered a mark of honor, culturally, to kill a dragon, their reintroduction has to be handled delicately.

In the end, they recruit the help of the Fire Sages, create a holiday to honor the dragons and the history of firebending, and Zuko sends part of his royal guard to assist the Warriors in guarding the creature during the first few years of its life.

There are only fifteen poaching attempts before the craze calms down, and all dragons and defending soldiers are unharmed, so Zuko considers the move a success.

When other dragons have joined the first one and the dragons' return has been firmly entrenched in the people's minds, the Sun Warriors send "his" hatchling—now standing as high as Zuko's shoulders—back to the capital with him after a visit.

On another sunny autumn day, Zuko sits at a low tea-table with Katara and Iroh and drinks another one of Iroh's experimental blends as they watch the dragon explore its new home in the capital.

Katara comments with a smile that she hopes having the dragon live in the royal compound causes less trouble than when Aang tried to help the zookeeper with his animals in Ba Sing Se—a story Iroh has heard rumors of in his tea shop in the city, but the details of which Katara can provide with much more accuracy.

Then she looks thoughtfully at the dragon and asks, "So, when do we get to ride it?"

Zuko chokes on his tea and splutters and is thankful that their children aren't around because they haven't thought to pester him about _that_ yet where dragons are concerned, but before he can think of an answer, Iroh smiles widely and begins to discuss the history of riding dragons and of their use in both warfare and surveillance, and they sit for a long time listening to tales of Roku's dragon, who was his companion as the Avatar just like Appa is Aang's.

The answer to Katara's question is _four months later_, when the dragon is old enough to be trained and broken, and after Zuko has grasped the idea that he and his wife can more or less safely _ride a dragon_ without being smitten by Agni for sacrilege, it becomes one of their favorite pastimes to sneak away when they can and visit the dragon's compound.

At Katara and Iroh's insistence, Zuko rides the dragon at the next Dragon Festival and spends the next several weeks teaching his children how to ride safely, as a result.

When he joins Katara at the side of one of their children's lessons to watch as they receive additional instruction from one of the dragon's handlers, she wraps one arm around him and leans up to whisper, "See? I told you riding the dragon was a good idea."

And, as with most disagreements with Katara, Zuko finds that, in the end, he has to agree.


	4. Cobalt Blue

_cobalt blue (n) - a deep blue pigment containing cobalt and aluminum oxides_

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It is nothing more than a trinket to most, a family heirloom passed down through generations. _A foreign necklace_, Zuko sometimes hears people whisper, _but she won't give it up._

They say it with slight disapproval, as though Katara should have to abandon all traces of her own history in order to rule by his side.

In older days, perhaps she would have had to do so, but _now_, _today_, as they rebuild, he won't let that happen. It pleases him to see his wife wearing her mother's necklace, because he doesn't love her for her compliance to his plans or to his culture; he loves her for her strong will and her pride in her heritage and her sharp mind that can see problems and solutions in ways that sometimes escape those raised and indoctrinated in Fire Nation glory.

(He loves her because she wears the set of hair combs he gave her on their engagement day pulled up in her new hairstyle along with the extra beads traditional among her people once a woman is married. He loves her because she taught him, early on in their marriage and at one of Iroh's many suggestions, how to fix her hair for her, and now they spend many early mornings talking and sitting on their bed as he combs and winds her long, dark hair into the style she has chosen to wear as Fire Lady.)

Everything in the Fire Nation is red and gold, the colors of fire and pride and power. On most days, Katara dresses as she pleases, and _as she pleases _is usually in blue. _It's the color of the ocean_, she shrugs,_ and I'm used to it_.

She is always careful to wear Zuko's country's colors on special days, though, and when she plans to make important statements in council. _A little flattery never hurts_, she'll say with a smile as she kisses his cheek before they walk into the council room.

But even on those days where she is swathed in fire's colors, even on those very formal days where she deigns to give up her hair-beads out of respect for her new home, she will not give up her mother's necklace.

She insists it's not noticeable, just a small band of blue around her neck, but Zuko knows that it is, because everyone is watching her, always, to look for mistakes as she adapts to a new culture and a new way of life.

She handles the pressure remarkably well.

And even though some people advocate her complete acquiescence to Fire Nation culture, Zuko thinks it's important that she maintain some sense of difference, some sense of _other_, to remind his people that they are not the world dominators they once hoped to be.

This is a new world now, and a new era in Fire Nation history.

And having once handled the necklace so thoughtlessly, having once had the audacity to _taunt_ Katara with her own heritage—having also learned that mentioning it tends to bring up embarrassing stories and insinuations he'd rather avoid, these days—Zuko swore long ago that he is never, ever saying anything that could be construed as negative about the necklace again.

It is precious to Katara, and therefore doubly precious to him.


	5. Slow Dancing

_slow dancing (v) - to dance slowly_

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Bending is like dancing, an art made by the body and its movements.

Katara has heard this comparison before in her travels, and she can see how it is true. There are many different styles of bending—slow and graceful and evasive and fast and sharp and direct—and in her travels, she has also seen that there are as many styles of dancing, perhaps more, as there are styles of bending.

Among her own people, in the Water Tribes, the dances are commemorative. The women are the keepers of memories, of ancient stories (even the North has allowed them that honor beyond their confinement to cook-fires and healing huts), and on cold winter nights and during festivals, they dance together in the lodges and around fires, bringing a people together against the water and the cold. Their fluid movements tell stories of the weather, of the ice, of the gods, and of the whales and the tiger-seals and the hunt.

In the Fire Nation, where dancing was publicly forbidden for long years, many of the dances have been forgotten, but in the Fire Sages' archives and in rural towns where the laws were less strictly enforced, there are dances that are sharp like the nation's bending and are as much _performing_ as they are _storytelling_. Zuko tells her that the dances mostly tell stories of the gods, of Agni and his warriors and of fire filling the land.

The Earth Kingdom's dances are as varied as its people. Katara has seen them sometimes, when she happens to be visiting Toph during a festival or during planting-time, when earthbenders and dancers each make offerings of their movements to the land to ensure a good yield. The Earth Kingdom's dances tell stories, too, like those of the Water Tribe, but their stories are of crops and mountains and ancient warriors revered in battle.

No one quite remembers the dances of the Air Nomads. Aang isn't sure they danced at all, even though his love of airbending and its airborne motions make him well suited to the pastime, and the nuns that Katara has met—the abbey at Mo Ce Sea continued to run its nunnery during the war, and its neutral stance made it a repository of knowledge—live in such austerity that Katara thinks Aang's memories might be correct.

But one day, a wrinkled, solemn-faced nun takes Katara down to old cellars, full of perfumes and wine and dusty trunks, and pulls out old scrolls. Katara sees, then, in script she can't decipher but in pictures she can understand, that the airbenders _did_ have their own dances, dedicated to the wind and the promise of freedom from earthly confinements.

She tells Zuko about the scrolls that evening as they're curled up together in their room in a far corner of the abbey (the young Fire Lord has several gallons of shirshiu-destroyed perfume to pay for as well as helping the Avatar recover remnants of his people's past), and Zuko smiles a little ruefully and says he remembers Iroh saying something, over tea during his banishment, about all of life being like dancing—a series of interconnected movements that, taken alone, seem isolated, but that, seen as a whole, tell a life's story.

Zuko had been angry and focused and unwilling to listen at the time, dismissing the comment as more of his uncle's foolish babbles, but here, in the quiet that falls over the abbey at nighttime, she can see in the soft fondness of his yellow eyes as he speaks that he thinks more highly of his uncle's words now than he did a few years ago.

She is thankful every day for Iroh's influence in Zuko's life.

Zuko won't dance with her publicly—she's asked, several times—but as Katara lies awake that night, wrapped in her new husband's arms, she thinks that Iroh is right. They were separate before and now are joined in a slow dance of days that ebbs and flows like the tides and changes like a fire in the wind, but each choice is one that entangles their lives more fully.

He won't dance with her publicly, but Katara likes this sort of dancing, the forging of their lives together every day, even better.

So she kisses his shoulder and smiles when he stirs in his sleep and pulls her tighter. She settles against him and falls asleep herself, a half-coherent prayer of thanks to the spirits drifting in her mind.


End file.
